FUNDING  THE  LEGAL-TENDER  DEBT. 


SPEECH 


OF 


Mr.  S.  B.  CHITTENDEN 


OF  NEW  YORK, 


HOUSE  OF  REPRESENTATIVES, 


j^EBRUARY   19,  1876 


^VV  ASHINGTON. 
1  876. 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2013 


http://archive.org/details/fundinglegaltendOOchit 


FUNDING  THE  LEGAL-TENDER  DEBT. 


SPEECH 


OF 


Me.  S.  B.  CHITTENDEN, 

OF  NEW  YORK, 

IN  THE 

HOUSE  OF  REPEESENTATIVES, 


-pEBRUARY    19,  1876. 


W  .V  S  II I  X  G  T  O  X  . 

1S7G. 


Avery  Architectural  and  Fine  Arts  Library 
Gift  of  Seymour  B.  Durst  Old  York  Library 


SPEECH 

OF 

ME.  S.  B.  CHITTENDEN. 


The  House  behi£  as  iu  Committee  of  the  Whole  for  debate  only- 
Mr.  CHITTENDEN  saitl: 

Mr.  Speaker:  I  have  the  honor  to  represent  here  a  large,  compact, 
and  intelligent  constituency,  actively  engaged  and  deeply  interested 
in  the  honest  commerce  of  the  country,  who  have  suffered  severely 
for  eight  years  from  a  deprec  iated  currency.  The  question  of  good 
money  has  become  of  vital  importance  to  them,  and  they  regard  it  as 
equally  so  to  the  whole  country,  and  look  with  eagerness  to  this  Con- 
gress for  such  practical  wisdom  in  legislation  as  the  case  imperatively 
demands. 

We  see,  sir,  with  our  own  eyes  that  a  disease  of  some  sort  has 
fastened  upon  all  the  material  interests  of  our  country.  It  touches 
already  nearly  every  man  and  every  home  in  the  land.  Its  victims  are 
not  by  any  means  diminishing.  Is  it  not  our  duty  as  intelligent  and 
faithful  representatives  of  the  people  to  find  out  the  nature  of  this 
disease  and  apply  the  true  remedy?  Can  we  do  this  too  quickly  for 
our  own  honor  or  our  country's  welfare  f 

There  is  a  popular  theory,  Mr.  Speaker,  that  my  subject  has  been 
plowed  and  harrowed  until  no  spot  remains  unfilled.  But  that  is  a 
great  and  grave  mistake.  I  think  contraction  a  field  too  long  neg- 
lected, and  at  enormous  cost.  I  differ  radically  with  the  gentleman 
from  Pennsylvania.  In  my  judgment  the  legal-tender  debt  of  the 
United  States  is  the  root  of  that  towering  growth  of  speculation,  ex- 
travagance, and  taxation  which  threatens  to  sweep  us  all  into  an 
abyss  of  ruin.  The  real  question  is  how  to  dispose  of  the  legal-ten- 
der debt  ?  This  is  the  most  momentous  question  that  Congress  or  the 
people  have  ever  had  to  consider  except  the  question  of  slavery.  It 
is  the  supplement  and  seqnel  of  the  Avar  for  the  Union.  It  confronts 
and  hinders  the  restoration  of  confidence.  It  is  a  menace  to-day,  To 
the  integrity  of  the  nation,  and  if  it  must  continue  to  oppress  the  peo- 
ple and  blast  the  commerce  of  a  country  which  of  itself  is  God's  fairest 
heritage,  I  am  not  disposed  to  be  any  wise  responsible  for  it. 

I  regard  our  mixed  currency  system  as  a  three-fold  anomaly.  In 
the  first  place,  we  have  the  legal-tender  notes,  a  device  and  invention 
of  war — as  truly  a  war  measure  as  the  building  of  forts  to  protect  this 
Capitol  or  the  construction  of  the  monitor  with  which  Women  fought 
the  Merrimae.  These  notes  were  issued  for  war  supplies  when  the 
Government  of  the  United  States  had  no  money,  precisely  as  the  con- 
federate government  issued  its  notes  for  war  supplies  when  it  had  no 
money.  In  either  case  the  notes  represent  exactly  the  same  thing, 
namely,  the  waste  of  war,  and  the  chances  of  war  have  determined 
the  present  value  of  one  and  the  worthlessness  of  the  other. 


4 


In  the  second  place,  we  have  banks  founded  -with  real  capital,  in 
general  harmony  with  the  genius  of  our  free  institutions  and  the  de- 
mands of  honest  commerce,  issuing  currency  every  dollar  of  which  is 
secured  by  gold-interest-bearing  bonds  at  90  per  cent,  of  their  par 
value,  which  bonds  it  is  important  to  remember  sell  in  the  chief  marts 
of  the  world  for  more  than  par  in  gold  itself. 

In  the  third  place,  by  an  act  of  Congress  the  bank  currency  I  have 
described,  every  dollar  of  which  has  in  fact  more  than  a  dollar  in 
gold  back  of  it,  is  redeemable  in  notes  which  are  useless  for  the  liqui- 
dation of  debts  beyond  onr  national  boundaries,  and  only  of  value 
within  them  because  the  law  through  a  forced  and  unnatural  reading 
of  the  Constitution  has  made  them  legal  tender.  Such,  Mr.  Speaker, 
is  our  "  philosophical"  system  of  currency,  if  the  gentleman  from 
Pennsylvania  will  loan  me  his  descriptive  term,  eleven  years  after  the 
close  of  the  war.  I  make  no  comments  ;  but  hope  I  may  be  pardoned 
for  saying  that  I  enjoyed  the  "collision"  which  occurred  here  the 
other  day  in  referring  it  to  two  committees. 

I  gladly  assume  that  the  people  have  declared,  at  least  in  the  ab- 
stract, for  an  early  resumption  of  specie  payments ;  and  I  also  believe 
that  the  great  majority  are  educated  and  prepared  to  discard  all 
shams  and  contrivances  and  support  their  representatives  in  such 
legislation  as  the  present  exigencies  demand.  Congress  resolved  last 
winter  to  resume  in  1879  ;  but  everybody  can  see  now  that  something 
more  is  necessary.  To  resume  coin  payments  after  what  has  happened 
is  a  process,  a  series  of  actions,  a  work  for  time  and  natural  forces 
properly  called  into  play.  No  man  can  tell  how  long  it  will  take; 
neither  is  it  important  to  know,  if  only  we  begin  right. 

The  law  of  January  14  embodied  some  fractions  of  good,  for  which 
let  us  be  thankful.  For  one  thing,  it  disposed  of  the  supremely  ridic- 
ulous currency-distribution  business,  which  had  sorely  vexed  Con- 
gress for  nearly  half  a  generation :  and,  when  rightly  understood,  it 
clearly  provides  currency  enough,  and  not  too  much,  as  1  shall  pres- 
ently show,  wholly  independent  of  legal-tender.  It  also  secured  a 
temporary  equilibrium,  a  sort  of  armistice,  between  the  opposing 
forces  of  rectitude  and  repudiation.  But  the  equilibrium  is  unstable. 
We  cannot  stand  where  we  are.  "We  must  advance  with  courage, 
or  our  vantage  ground  will  be  lost.  How,  then,  shall  we  advance  ! 
The  answer  to  this  question  seems  to  me  now  as  clear  as  sunlight. 
Our  way  is  as  the  strait  gate  !  We  have  to  renounce  our  folly.  We 
have  to  turn  from  the  crooked  and  blind  ways  of  schemers,  and 
dreamers.  A  mountain  of  vicious  legal-tender  debt  confronts  us. 
We  cau  neither  get  round  it  nor  provide  for  it  in  a  lump.  We  must 
hew  it  away  to  the  level  of  truth,  honor,  and  common  sense,  and  there, 
and  there  only,  can  we  stand  to'rebuild  and  restore  the  waste  places. 
We  must  fund  the  legal-tender  debt.  Not  in  3.65  permanent  bonds, 
because  there  is  no  money  in  this  country  in  its  normal  healthful  con- 
dition to  invest  at  that  rate  of  interest.  Not  in  interconvertible 
bonds,  for  many  reasons,  but  especially  because  such  funding  is  only 
another  name  for  the  most  unique  and  gigantic  machine  for  specula- 
tion ever  invented.  With  it  any  one  of  a  score  of  great  operators  in 
Wall  street  might  control  at  will,  with  absolute  precision,  from  week 
to  week,  for  private  ends,  the  bank  reserves  of  the  metropolis,  with 
such  results  to  the  business  of  the  whole  country  as  I  need  not  stop 
to  foreshadow.  We  must  fund  the  legal-tender  notes  permanently  at 
the  minimum  popular  rate  of  interest,  not  too  fast,  but  steadily,  year 
after  year,  until  they  are  extinct.  And  why  not  !  Are  they  not  an 
unnatural  product  .'    Were  they  not  born  of  an  extreme  exigency, 


now  happily  passed  away,  when  the  noise  of  battle  was  on  sea  ami 
land  I  Was  it  not  explicitly  provided  when  they  were  first  issued  that 
they  should  at  all  times  he  fundable  at  the  option  of  the  holder.' 
Would  their  authors  or  Congress  have  tolerated  them  for  a  moment 
but  for  such  promise!  Surely  1  need  not  stop  for  an  instant  to  answer 
these  questions. 

But  have  we  not  too  much  currency  1  The  gentleman  from  Penn- 
sylvania says  "  No  "  with  great  emphasis.  Let  us  look  into  that  a 
1  i  1 1  If.  And  here  I  challenge  candid  and  intelligent  attention,  not  to 
any  mere  argument  of  mine,  but  to  testimony,  which  is  always  better 
than  argument. 

First.  I  wish  to  call  your  attention,  as  I  have  promised,  to  the  fact 
that  with  legal-tender  notes  withdrawn  we  are  sure  to  have  currency 
enough  under  existing  laws.  More  than  two  thousand  national  banks 
now  doing  business,  and  new  banks  without  limit,  are  at  liberty  to 
issue  all  the  currency  that  can  be  profitably  employed  whenever  ami 
wherever  it  is  needed  ami  called  for  by  legitimate  commerce.  This  is 
the  law,  and  it  is  right.  It  is  also  decisive,  absolutely  so.  The  banker 
is  as  free  to  establish  his  bank  and  issue  currency  on  a  sound  basis  as 
the  merchant  is  to  invest  his  capital  in  cotton  or  iron,  as  the  farmer  is 
to  plow  more  acres  or  breed  more  sheep.  In  the  name  of  reason,  is  not 
t  hat  enough  f  When  it  was  first  proposed  to  give  the  banks  all  this  lib- 
erty, it  was  widely  held  to  mean  inflation  of  the  most  gigantic  propor- 
tions, and  there  are  some  who  yet  so  regard  it.  But  I  think  experience 
has  shown  that  bankers  as  a  class  are  no  more  idiots  than  other  men  : 
and  while  the  law  requires  them  to  put  up  for  every  dollar  of  cur- 
rency issued  that  which  will  sell  for  a  gold  dollar  both  at  home  and 
abroad,  there  is  no  more  danger  of  excessive  issues  than  there  is  dan- 
ger that  Mr.  Vanderbilt  and  Mr.  Scott  will  amuse  themselves  by  lay- 
ing gold  tracks  for  their  railway  trains. 

To  avoid  misapprehension  let  me  say  here  that  I  have  had  noper- 
onal  interest  in  any  national  bank  for  many  years,  but  I  regard  the 
hue  and  cry  against  them  as  unintelligent  and  unworthy  of  serious 
notice.  A  good  many  of  them  will  have  to  go  into  liquidation,  but 
others,  better  managed,  will  take  their  places  when  needed.  We  can- 
not dispense  with  such  banks  as  merchants  need  any  more  than  we 
can  dispense  with  savings-banks,  and  when  we  war  upon  or  abolish 
either  it  will  be  in  regular  order  for  Congress  to  enact  that  our  car- 
riages shall  go  without  wheels  and  our  farms  go  without  the  plow  and 
the  reaper. 

And  now,  Mr.  Speaker,  I  call  your  attention  to  facts  of  history 
which  demonstrate  and  show  conclusively,  if  experience  proves  any- 
thing, that  we  shall  never  find  a  basis  for  confidence  and  fresh  enter- 
prise until  we  have  largely  contracted  our  currency.  In  the  crisis  of 
1S37  the  banks  of  the  State  of  New  York  suspended  specie  payments 
on  the  10th  of  May.  To  save  their  charters  they  were  compelled  to 
resume  on  or  before  the  10th  of  May,  1638.  They  did  so  resume,  and 
iu  doing  it  they  contracted  their  issues  from  $25,500,000  on  the  1st  of 
January,  1837,  to  $13,000,000  in  round  figures  on  the  1st  of  January. 
1838.  Here,  sir,  is  a  case  where  the  leading  State  of  the  I  'nion.  thirty- 
seven  years  ago,  compelled  its  banks  to  keep  faith  with  the  holders  of 
their  paper,  the  doing  of  which  forced  them  to  contract  nearly  50  per 
cent,  in  a  single  year;  and  the  point  to  be  observed  and  remembered  is 
that  there  was  no  complaint.  The  dead  were  buried ;  the  living 
were  supported,  and  confidence  and  hope  revived. 

I  have  no  doubt,  sir,  but  the  gentleman  from  Pennsylvania  disap- 
proved when  he  read  the  proposition  of  the  Secretary  of  the  Treas- 


6 

nry  to  fund  the  legal-tender  debt  at  the  nite  of  two  millions  a  month, 
or $24,000,000  in  a  year.  But  think  of  it!  New  York  in  1837.  with  less 
than  $20,000,000  out,  withdrew  twelve  and  a  half  millions  in  a  year, 
and  was  ready  at  the  close  of  it  to  redeem  the  rest  on  demand.  "  The 
grand  Republic  in  1870,  the  centennial  year,  with  $372,000,000  of  debt 
under  protest,  with  the  people  everywhere  crying  out  for  relief,  pro- 
poses, through  its  minister  of  finance,  to  pay  at  the  rate  of  two  mill- 
ions a  month,  and  a  man  can  be  found  in  Congress  to  oppose  it! 

Well,  sir,  I  know  the  gentleman  is  sincere.  His  own  State  in  1837 
enjoyed  the  sunset  glories  of  the  old  United  States  Bank.  That  con- 
cern was  a  min  at  the  time,  and  could  not  pay  its  debts,  and  his  State 
did  not  resume  with  New  York.  A  year  or  two  later  on,  this  favored 
Government  paper  machine,  in  its  death  struggles,  sold  its  rags  to  the 
.extent  of  ten  millions  or  more  to  New  York,  and  nearly  broke  us  again. 
If  the  gentleman  is  consistent,  he  will  say,  and  maintain  as  best  he 
can,  that  Xew  York  made  a  frightful  blunder  in  contracting  in  1^::?. 
and  brought  unnecessary  ruin  upon  her  people.  But  lie  will  convince 
no  one  of  that. 

The  banks  of  the  whole  country  suspended  again  in  1857,  and 
resumed,  generally,  in  the  following  year;  audit  is  important  for  our 
purpose  to  compare  the  contraction  and  its  immediate  consequences 
in  that  crisis  with  the  inflation  which  followed  the  panic  of  1^73 
and  its  consequences. 

The  paper  circulation  of  the  whole  country  in  1857  was  $215,000,000. 
In  1858  it  had  contracted  to  $156,000,000.  The  bank  loans  in  185? 
were  $085,000,000;  in  1858,  $583,000,000.  Here  is  contraction  of 
$59,000,000  in  circulation,  and  8102,000,000  in  bank  loans;  an  aggre- 
gate of  $161,000,000  in  one  year. 

Note  the  consequences  of  this  sharp  contraction.  It  was  a  fierce 
but  short  struggle,  in  which  rotten  banks  and  speculators  of  every 
name  and  bankrupt  merchants  and  manufacturers  were  denied  ac- 
commodations and  forced  to  break  and  adjust  their  affairs.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  solvent  and  honest,  with  rare  exceptions,  found  all 
the  help  they  required,  with  such  sacritices  as  they  cheerfully  ac- 
cepted, to  maintain  their  credit.  In  the  exceptional  cases,  those  who 
were  really  solvent  promptly  recovered  from  temporary  embarrass- 
ments. 

The  result  was  as  natural  as  the  growth  of  grass  in  spring-time, 
and  may  be  as  easily  understood.  Capital,  always  timid  and  watch- 
ful, saw  that  the  wrecks  of  a  wild  speculative  epoch  were  cleared 
away,  and  thus  confidence  was  rapidly  re-established,  so  that  the  two 
years  from  July,  1858,  until  the  war  clouds  appeared,  are  properly 
spoken  of  as  among  the  most  prosperous  in  our  history. 

We  come  now  to  the  panic  of  1873,  and  I  propose  to  contrast  the 
issues  of  that  with  the  history  I  have  just  recited.  The  law  of  June 
20. 1874,  nine  months  after  the  crash,  instead  of  providing  for  the  grad- 
ual payment  of  the  legal-tender  debt,  as  it  should  have  done,  made  a 
new  injection  of  twenty-six  millions  of  it  into  our  "  philosophical" 
currency  system,  whereby  bank  credits  were  lawfully  and  enormously 
enlarged.  And  the  law  of  January  14, 1875,  enacts  that  Government 
shall  pay  off  its  legal-tender  debt  only  at  the  rate  of  80  per  cent,  of  the 
fresh  issues  of  bank  currency  by  its  subjects !  Here  it  will  be  observed 
that  in  both  its  great  financial  measures  since  the  panic  of  1873  Con- 
gress clings  to  the  fatal  and  preposterous  theory  that  more  currency 
is  the  cure  for  the  ills  we  suffer  ;  and  that,  too,  in  the  face  of  a  reduc- 
tion in  the  volume  of  business  transactions  equal  to  more  than  one- 
third  (I  speak  within  bounds)  of  the  whole  business  of  the  country,  and 


7 


also  in  the  face  of  enormous  and  unprecedented  .-dirinkage  in  values, 
already  far  in  advance  of  those  of  1857,  but  still  going  on  and  on! 

Here  again,  sir,  is  testimony  which  is  more  than  argument.  We 
had  contraction,  sharp,  vehement,  in  1857.  Confidence  and  enter- 
prise were  restored  in  1858.  We  had  wild  inflation  in  187:3  and  1874. 
In  187(>,  confidence  and  enterprise  are  lost  ! 

Such  is  the  contrast.    Why  does  it  exist  I    T  will  tell  you  why. 

In  1857  we  had  no  dishonored  legal-tender  debt — another  name  for 
Government  machinery  for  tiding  over  all  forms  of  extravagance  and 
bankruptcy — as  we  had  in  1>7:5  and  still  have.  The  race  of  brilliant 
men  who  nowwait  for  tra.de  to  grow  up  to  a  volume  of  currency  largely 
in  excess  of  that  in  use  at  the  climax  of  the  railway  mania  had  not 
then  become  powerful.  Bank  credits  and  currency  were  then  left  to 
respond  to  natural  laws,  as  they  do  not  now.  The  figures  and  state- 
ments I  have  given  you  are  startling,  but  they  are  also  true,  and  it 
•  is  high  time  for  Congress  to  know  the  truth  and  respect  it. 

But,  says  an  objector,  the  crash  of  1873  differed  from  that  of  1857. 
It  had  wider  proportions,  and  required  different  treatment.  But  did 
it?  Principles  are  eternal!  Your  child  has  a  broken  leg.  Your  good 
surgeon  comes  in  with  his  splints  and  bandages,  and  cures  it  in  the 
regular  way.  Next  month  your  house  falls  down,  and  the  arms  and 
legs  of  your  household  are  all  broken.  The  same  surgeon  calls,  and 
he  treats  all  as  he  treated  one.  or  you  will  have  a  family  of  cripples. 
You  meet  a  dozen  men  starving  in  the  street,  you  give  them  bread  and 
they  live.  To-morrow  you  meet  a  hundred,  and  because  there  are  a 
hundred  will  you  feed  them  with  stones  that  they  may  die? 

I  fearlessly  affirm  that  there  is  not  one  argument  in  support  of 
the  present  volume  of  currency  which  is  not  equally  tenable  to  justify 
its  indefinite  expansion  on  the  llimsiest  pretext. 

No  man,  for  example,  in  his  right  mind  will  pretend  that  it  required 
as  much  money  to  buy  sixty  tons  of  railroad  iron  at  850  per  ton  in 
1875  as  it  did  to  buy  one  hundred  tons  of  the  same  thing  at  875  per 
ton  in  1872.  These  figures  fairly  represent  the  comparative  prices  of 
railroad  iron  and  the  quantities  in  use  in  the  respective  years.  I  might 
give  a  thousand  such  examples;  but  one  is  as  good  as  a  thousand  for 
my  purpose;  the  rest  are  known  and  read  by  all  men.  A  child  can 
understand  that  a  merchant  who  employs  ten  ships  or  ten  men  to  do 
the  appropriate  work  of  six  will  reap  nothing  but  loss  while  the  folly 
is  persisted  in. 

Unless  all  economic  laws  known  and  accepted  by  us  prior  to  the 
war  have  been  abrogated  or  reversed:  unless  the  sun  itself  is  turned 
back  ;  unless  we  are  hereafter  to  cultivate  strawberries  in  ice-houses, 
and  plow  our  fields  with  the  heads  of  our  horses  harnessed  to  the 
whirnetrees ;  unless  we  are  in  the  future  to  build  our  houses  without 
foundations,  and  navigate  the  seas  in  paper  ships:  we  shall  never 
restore  confidence  and  solid  enterprise  to  our  country  until  we  make  a 
final  and  irreversible  decree  against  the  legal-tender  debt  abomination, 
leaving  the  commerce  of  the  country  free  to  fix  its  own  laws  in  respect 
to  the  volume  of  currency  and  bank  credits.  The  case  is  so  clear, 
Mr.  Speaker,  that  I  almost  feel  it  to  be  an  impeachment  of  the  common 
sense  of  the  House  to  argue  it  seriously.  The  laws  which  govern  it 
are  as  immutable  as  the  force  which  turns  the  earth  upon  its  axis. 
The  commerce  of  the  country  is  stuffed  to  death  with  the  unkept. 
promises  of  Government.  Yes!  with  the  broken  promises  of  the 
United  States,  whose  flag  is  the  symbol  of  honor  and  power  every- 
where save  at  home  ! 

Disguise  ir  as  we  may,  there  is  but  one  remedy  for  existing  evil* 


8 


We  suffer  through  dishonor.    We  shall  begin  to  prosper  when  we  he- 
come  Honest,  and  not  before. 

Is  it  not  enough  that  all,  or  nearly  all,  good  investments,  good  en- 
terprises, and  solvent  interests  have  suffered  severely  for  more  than 
two  years  because  some  people  thought  the  plague  of  legal-tender 
would  restore  impossible  values,  in  the  interest  of  the  unfortunate, 
the  reckless,  or  the  wicked  ?  Is  there  a  true  sign  in  any  direction  of 
a  restoration  of  confidence  and  the  profitable  employment  of  capital 
now  idle,  so  long  as  the  present  condition  of  the  currency  continues  f 
Not  one  such  sign  that  I  can  discover. 

It  is  idle  to  talk  of  paying  legal-tenders  in  coin  in  1879  without 
steadily  funding  them  prior  to  that.  There  is  nothing  in  history, 
nothing  in  the  present  commerce  of  the  world,  nothing  in  our  own 
matchless  resources,  unless  we  find  where  to  mine  gold  and  silver 
pure  as  we  cut  the  granite,  to  warrant  the  hope  that  we  can  bor- 
row or  hoard  gold  enough  to  resume  and  maintain  coin  payments 
with  our  present  volume  of  currency.  Our  foreign  debt  and  enor- 
mous taxes  at  home  forbid  all  such  schemes.  Resumption  by  Gov- 
ernment means  resumption  by  two  thousand  national  banks.  To 
think  of  that  under  existing  circumstances  is  to  think  without  rea- 
soning, and  to  ignore  history,  experience,  and  common  sense. 

But  some  one  may  inquire  what  besides  funding  ?  What  shall  the 
banks  redeem  in?  We  are  in  a  wilderness  of  excessive  currency,  and 
though  our  way  out  is  perfectly  straight  and  no  longer  obscure,  there 
are  some  chasms  to  be  crossed  only  as  we  reach  them.  All  present  in- 
dications point  to  the  voluntary  surrender  of  national-bank  notes  for 
the  next  year  or  two  more  rapidly  than  required  to  preserve  easy  rela- 
tions to  the  redeeming  agent.  When  the  clause  requiring  the  banks 
to  redeem  in  legal-tender  shall  be  repealed,  the  time  should  be  fixed 
for  them  to  redeem  in  coin.  For  the  present,  funding  with  due  caution 
is  our  chief  and  only  concern.  We  know  it  to  be  right.  We  promised 
to  do  it,  and  if  Ave  know  anything  about  it  we  can  see  that  there  is  no 
other  way  to  dispose  of  legal-tenders  so  easily.  We  had,  sir,  in  the 
years  first  succeeding  the  close  of  the  war,  ample  surplus  revenues, 
which  might  have  been  used  to  pay  off  the  legal-tender  debt,  and  the 
failure  so  to  apply  them  is  au  ineffaceable  blot  upon  the  statesman- 
ship of  our  time.  But  surplus  revenues  are  no  more  for  us !  Some 
other  method  must  be  devised.  My  proposition  is,  to  authorize  the 
issue  of  four  millions  of  bonds  per  month  for  eight  months  of  each 
year,  beginning  with  February  and  including  September,  the  bonds 
to  run  forty  years,  bearing  interest  at  a  rate  of  not  exceeding  4^  per 
cent,  per  annum,  and  to  be  sold  to  the  highest  bidder  on  the  first  Tues- 
day of  the  month  for  legal-tenders,  the  latter  to  be  immediately  de- 
stroyed. This  seems  to  me  to  be  a  feasible,  conservative,  honest,  and 
effective  measure.  Nobody  can  mistake  its  meaning  or  its  scope.  It 
means  clear  away  the  wrecks  with  all  proper  forbearance.  It  means 
bury  the  dead  that  the  living  may  continue  to  liA*e.  It  means  legis- 
lation for  those  who  live  by  hard  work  and  on  fixed  salaries,  instead 
of  legislation  exclusively  in  the  interest  of  gamblers  and  hopeless 
bankrupts ;  and  just  here  is  the  line  of  battle,  henceforth,  both  in 
and  out  of  Congress.  Finally  my  proposition,  simple  as  it  is,  means 
specie  payments,  perhaps  not  in  1879 — I  think  not — but  as  soon  as 
practicable. 

How  long,  Mr.  Speaker,  shall  the  precious  resources  of  our  country 
be  trifled  with  ?  Shall  Congress,  year  after  year,  waste  its  time  in 
debating  mere  paper  contrivances  unknown  to  experience,  which  no 
mortal  man  can  explain  to  the  common  intelligence?   Are  we  to  as- 


enme  tluit  the  pe  >pleof  t  bis  country  consent  to  be  given  over  to  si  nuns 
and  delusions  I  Debt  is  not  money  I  Sorely  it  is  not.  The  Legal-tender 
debl  »»t  the  United  States  is  not  good  money!  If  we  persist  tothe  con- 
trary, the  time  will  come  when  onr  money  will  be  interconvertible,  or 
at  least  of  equal  value  with  confederate  money.  That  is  the  kind  of 
interconvertible  money  we  are  in  danger  of  having  !  Seven  thousand 
seven  hundred  and  forty  commercial  failures  on  record  for  1*75,  and 
a  good  many  more  unrecorded!  For  January,  1876,  the  number  far 
exceeds  that  of  the  corresponding  period  of  last  year!  The  gentle- 
man from  Pennsylvania  attributes  these  disasters  in  large  meas- 
ure to  the  contraction  of  the  currency  under  the  resumption  bill  of  last 
year.  But  he  is  greatly  mistaken.  He  might  w  ith  equal  reason,  in 
my  humble  judgment,  charge  them  to  the  amnesty  bill  of  his  col- 
league, not  yet  a  law,  and  I  will  undertake  to  prove  that,  if  called 
upon,  to  either  of  the  committees  having  in  charge  the  "philosoph- 
ical" currency  of  the  gentleman.  Let  the  gentleman  try  an  experi- 
ment. Let  him  sink  countless  ships  all  along  the  channel  of  the  Poto- 
mac from  the  bridge  to  its  mouth,  and  then  with  his  splendid  rhetoric, 
ami  polished  sentences,  invite  clear-headed  navigators  in  command  of 
good  ships  outside  to  make  sail  over  his  wrecks.  Will  one  of  them 
accept  the  invitation  ?  Not  one.  No  more,  sir,  shall  capital  and  fresh 
enterprise  traverse  the  wrecks  which  the  neglected  legal-tender  debt 
has  made  and  still  conceals. 

If  this  Congress  shall  achieve  the  enviable  distinction  of  re-estab- 
lishing the  national  honor  by  reaffirming  the  principle  of  funding, 
those  who  return  here  next  year  will  rind  light  breaking  everywhere. 
No  prophet  can  tell  the  ruins  yet  hidden  and  which  must  be  revealed 
as  a  primary  indispensable  condition  of  a  restoration  of  confidence. 

Some  say,  If  you  fund  the  legal-tender  debt  you  will  lose  interest  you 
are  now  saving.  Well,  sir,  that  argument  appeals  to  some  minds,  and 
may  be  listened  to  here  for  aught  I  know :  but  in  the  counting-room 
of  a  reputable  commercial  establishment  it  should  be  regarded  as 
-worthy  of  a  highwayman.  What  is  the  plain  English  of  it?  Just 
this :  The  rich  debtor,  having  enjoyed  his  forced  loan  for  a  dozen 
years  without  a  cent  of  interest,  with  icy  audacity  telling  his  impov- 
erished creditors  that  he  will  not  recognize  his  obligation  because 
he  cannot  yet  bring  himself  to  pay  interest.  That  is  it  precisely. 
True,  you  have  saved  nearly  twenty  millions  a  year,  and  the  saving 
has  cost  the  people  two  or  three  hundred  millions  a  year.  It  has  cost 
them  their  right  to  work  and  prosper.  No  man  escapes.  The  idle 
bricklayers  recently  begging  for  work  in  one  of  our  chief  cities,  and 
intimating  at  the  same  time  that  they  might  become  criminals  to 
obtain  daily  food,  have  lost  their  all.  Yes,  Mr.  Speaker,  the  whole 
people  sutier  consciously  or  unconsciously,  and  will  continue  to  suffer 
until  the  curse  of  the  legal-tender  debt  is  removed. 

A  few  words  more  and  I  have  done.  On  the  18th of  December,  1 B65, 
the  House  of  Representatives  of  the  Thirty-eighth  Congress  voted, 
144  to  6— a  very  significant  vote— to  its  everlasting  honor,  to  with- 
draw legal-tender  preparatory  to  a  resumption  of  specie  payments. 

I  do  not  intend  to  say  anything  extravagant  or  sensational  here; 
but  when  that  law  for  contraction  was  repealed  in  1868,  I  believed 
the  act  repealing  it  would  cost  the  country  more  than  the  war  for  the 
Union  had  cost  up  to  that  time.  I  am  sure  now  that  I  was  right  in 
that  opinion.  I  am  aware,  Mr.  Speaker,  that  this  is  a  case  which  ad- 
mitsof  no  close  computations.  There  is  no  arithmetic  equal  to  the  task. 
Its  very  vastness  is  the  true  and  only  measure  of  the  calamity.  What 
we  do  know  is  that  our  magnificent  heritage,  alive  with  forty  millions 


10 


of  free  souls,  and  full  of  the  richest  gifts  of  nature's  God,  has  been,  for 
eight  long  years,  given  over  to  gambling  and  waste,  and  the  end  is  not 
yet!  Not  yet!  We  know  that  the  shadows  are  deeper  and  the  victims 
more  numerous  than  they  were  when  we  came  up  here  last  year.  Wo 
also  know  that  the  battle  between  honor  and  dishonor  is  not  ended. 

The  thing  we  need  is  an  intelligent  apprehension  of  the  present  con- 
dition of  the  country,  and  courage  to  do  our  whole  duty  as  becomes 
representatives  of  the  American  people  without  any  Reference  what- 
ever to  the  next  presidential  election. 


ft 


